Almost a year later Mina (she pronounced it MY-na) walked along Genesee St. in the bright sunshine of an October afternoon on her way back from school. A crisp rustling sound moved ahead of her as a breeze blew red and yellow leaves across the front yards and down the sidewalks of the homes she passed. She walked by pretty and inviting houses that looked to have fresh coats of paint and neatly trimmed shrubs. There were nice cars in the driveways. The lawns were a special shade of green this time of year when the sky shone down so blue and clear.
Sometimes she would see pretty and frilly curtains
in an upstairs bedroom window that might mean a girl her age lived there, a
girl who went up to bed at night after watching Desi and Lucy, first kissing
her mother and father goodnight and giving her dog one last pat on the head.
Her heart would ache with loneliness for the rest of the walk back. She crossed
Hampden Place,
a side street from which the greasy smells of Jean’s Beans and Fish Fry would
come wafting down on Fridays. She loved that smell. It reminded her of Friday
night take-out with her family.
Mina stifled a shiver and shrugged herself deeper
into her sweater, holding it tightly closed at the neck. She thought of
crossing the street to be in the sun, but if caught she would be spoken to for
not following the exactly prescribed route back from school. The days were
getting colder, but the coats hadn’t been given out yet to those who were
without them. She didn’t like this route because it passed the theater where
her mother had taken her to see movies all the time. Well, maybe twice, but
these were now remembered as very special times. She came to King Cole Ice
Cream and remembered her father bringing the family for cones one hot and humid
night last summer after a picnic in Frankfort Gorge. This was before her world
was destroyed by the fire.
Mina neared the Uptown Liquor Store with a mixture
of pleasure and dread. In the window she knew she would see a small cardboard
sign on which a couple smiled out at her, holding drinks and each other’s hand.
They looked very much like her parents. Each day since she had noticed it, Mina
would stop for a while and stare at the cardboard display. But she knew a child
could stand looking into a liquor store window for only so long before someone
came out to speak to her or called the orphanage to report her.
This day, when she approached the store’s window,
the sign was gone. She entered the store and asked the clerk if the
picture-sign of the couple holding hands was to be thrown out. “It’s gone,” he
said, “ probably somewhere in the cans out back.”
Mina ran around to the back of the building and
looked through trash cans and old cardboard boxes. She found the sign and sat
for a while staring at the couple that looked so like her parents. The printed
cardboard was about one by two feet and thin enough to fit under her sweater,
up under her chin. One end of the sign showed below the bottom of her sweater,
but she would somehow hold her books very low to cover it up. She hurried
toward the orphanage holding the sign against her beating chest. She would
somehow sneak it into the building and up to the dormitory she shared with nine
other girls and quickly hide it in her half of the dresser. She would conceal
it at the bottom of a drawer under her socks and underwear and denims and play
blouses, hide it from anyone who might tell on her. Then when the aloneness
pressed in on her she could spread the clothes apart and look down at the
couple holding each other’s hand as they smiled up at her. The memory of her
mother and father was so much more vivid with the sign. Mina would feel them
with her.
She resolved that if her secret were ever discovered, she would
figure some way to keep the picture at any cost. If necessary, she would steal
out of the building in the middle of the night and take it with her. She would
never give it up. Her mother and father hadn’t given her up.
When Mina returned from the refectory after supper that evening,
Sister Cliodhna (klee-UN-a) was standing at the dresser in the dormitory. The
nun looked first at the girl and then into the opened drawer. Then she closed
the drawer and took Mina by the hand to a room next door with a few upholstered
chairs that was sometimes used by the visiting social worker.
“Mina, honey,” said Sister, “your mom and dad are never coming
back. They’re up in heaven with your little sister.”
“I know,” said Mina, as she looked over the nun’s shoulder.
“Look at me, honey. We don’t allow pictures of the family … even
pretend pictures … because you have to start a new life.”
“I know,” said Mina, as she continued to look over the nun’s
shoulder.
Sister Cliodhna,continued to look at the girl and didn’t know
what more she could say or do. She wasn’t convinced herself regarding the
policy, whether it was right or wrong, helpful or harmful. But she knew that
for Mina it was time to move on. “I’m going to let you keep the picture for a
few days,” said the nun, “if you promise me to keep it a secret from everyone.” Mina
agreed. “And you must promise that you’ll think about what I said and make sure
the picture is gone from here before Saturday.” Mina shook her head.
The fall weather had begun in earnest as Mina sat in her classes
on Friday morning. She was glad that last night the hats and coats had been
handed out to those in need. The wind whipped the rain around outside and
splashed it against the 4th grade classroom windows and the overhead lights
were turned on against the gloom outside. She had had to bend the sign in two
to fit it into the plastic book bag she carried on rainy days. The pretend
picture couldn’t go back to the orphanage and Mina did not yet have a plan for
what to do with it. She would not throw it out.
The rain let up during the afternoon and when school was out
Mina headed back to the children’s home. She followed the prescribed route, but
not precisely. When she came to the liquor store, Mina walked down the alley to
the back and looked around for a place to hide the sign. Finally she settled on
what seemed like a dry area underneath the small loading dock, up under a heavy
timber. There she left the pretend picture of her mom and dad so she could gaze
at it whenever she came from school.
Over the next few weeks she stopped every day. The spot under
the dock was not as dry as she had hoped and the sign deteriorated more and
more. The couple holding hands were now barely recognizable after being outside
in the alley for so long. Eventually, Mina arrived one day after a windy rain
storm and the poster was gone. She looked frantically around the back alley to
see where it might have landed.
After a while, she gave up the search and sat down on the dock
as the season’s first snow began to lightly fall. The smell of fried fish and
french fries came to her from up the street at Jean’s Beans. She felt truly
alone in the world. It was hard to let go of her life with mom and dad. She
felt it was right to try to hang on. But she couldn’t.
Maybe the loss of the sign was for the best, she thought. The
couple weren’t her real parents. Sister Cliodhna told her yesterday there was
an older couple interested in having Mina come to live with them. Maybe she
would have an upstairs bedroom with frilly curtains on the window.
Maybe the people would be as nice as mom and dad. Maybe, but she
really didn’t think so. She knew that it could never be so. She looked around
the alley as the snow continued to fall. She knew it was time to go.
copyright David Griffin, 2007
The
Windswept Press
Saugerties, NY
Write to me. www.windsweptpress.
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